Back in March, a rumor made the rounds that Adobe would move away from selling packaged software, making Creative Suite programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator only available as cloud-based subscription software. The rumors claimed May 1 as the date this this change would happen. While not giving much specific information, Adobe at that time did confirm that it would stop selling physical packaged software and that all software would be available via download or online subscription. As often happens with rumors, May 1 came and went with no announcement from Adobe.

However, today during its keynote at the Adobe Max Creativity Conference, Adobe announced sweeping changes to the Creative Suite programs. All Creative Suite programs will now be re-branded as Creative Cloud.  Adobe will stop selling perpetual licenses and move completely to a subscription-based pricing system for all former CS apps. Creative Cloud (CC) is currently priced at $50 per month for individuals who purchase an annual subscription. Existing Adobe customers who own CS3 through CS5.5 get the first year of Creative Cloud at a promotional price $30 per month; educational pricing is also $30 per month. CS6 users can sign up for CC for $20 a month for the first year. More importantly for many photographers, single app pricing is $10 a month for the first year. Lightroom is the only CS app that will exist both as part of the CC and as a perpetual license. According to Adobe, this is due to Lightroom’s status as both a consumer and professional product. Adobe also announced significant upgrades to the new CC apps that will launch in June.

What does this mean for professional photographers? For most of us, it will be a big change. CS6 will continue to be available as a perpetual license and will be supported through the next significant upgrade to the Mac and Windows operating systems. However, there will be no further development for that version. Going forward, if you want to use Photoshop, you will have to have a Creative Cloud subscription of some sort.

While some level of internet connectivity is likely required, these are not (despite the name) cloud-based apps that require a constant connection. These are software programs that you download and install to your computer. You can work offline as you would with any version of Photoshop you have used in the past. The big difference now is that if you don’t pay your subscription fee, the software will stop functioning.

More information about the changes coming to Photoshop specifically can be found on Adobe’s website:

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/breaking-from-tradition-photoshop-cc.html

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/photoshop-cc-for-creative-cloud-members-coming-soon.html

Adobe has announced the release of the public “beta” version of Lightroom 5. From the Adobe Lightroom Journal blog post:

The Lightroom team is proud to introduce the fifth major version of the product designed for and by photographers. It was 7 years ago when we introduced the very first public beta of Lightroom at MacWorld on January 9, 2006. Since 2006 we’ve been hard at work improving an application that’s intended to be as easy to use as it is powerful.  This release builds on the image quality improvements in Lightroom 4 to provide a truly complete workflow and imaging solution.  We keep hearing from customers that they love Lightroom but needed to leave Lightroom to complete X, Y, or Z.  Lightroom 5 beta solves those issues.

New/Improved Lightroom 5 features of note include:

• Advanced Healing Brush
• Upright Perspective Correction
• Radial Filter
• Smart Previews
• Improved Photo Book Creation
• Slideshows with Videos and Still Images
• PNG file support
• True Full Screen Mode
• Configurable grid overlays
• Additional search criteria for filters and smart collections
• Lock zoom position preference settings
• Direction field in EXIF metadata panel
• “Set as Target Collection” checkbox in Create Collections dialogue
• Integrity verification of DNG files
• LAB color readout
• Aspect slider added to the Manual tab in the Lens Correction panel
• Persistent clipping indicators between Lightroom sessions
• Crop overlay aspect ratios

More information, including system requirements, can be found on Adobe’s blog announcement post. The Lightroom 5 public beta can be downloaded from Adobe’s website: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/

Nik’s Silver EFEX plug-in is part of the newly priced bundle.

Perhaps making up for the controversy it created when it discontinued the Snapseed Desktop app, Google today announced a significant price cut for the Nik plug-in suite. The Nik plug-ins have long been popular with photographers looking to expand the power of Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom. Previously these plug-ins were in the $100-200 range with full six plug-in suites running $300 for Aperture/Lightroom and $500 for Photoshop/Elements.

However, today’s announcement reduces that price to $130 for the “Nik Collection by Google” and includes the Color Efex Pro 4, Dfine 2, HDR Efex Pro 2, Sharpener Pro 3, Silver Efex Pro 2 and Viveza 2 plugins. Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that, according to the announcement, if you have bought any of the Nik plug-ins in the past, Google will be contacting you and offering you the ability to upgrade to the entire suite for free. If you have never tried the Nik plug-ins, you can visit niksoftware.com for a 15-day free trial of the Collection.

See the Nik Plug-in announcement on Google+ here.

By Theano Nikitas

Adobe has been teasing photographers with sneak peeks of Photoshop CS6 for the past couple of months and tonight finally unveiled the software as a free public beta that’s available now for download. You can download Photoshop CS6 as a beta by clicking here.

We got an early look at the software, under NDA, at an Adobe-sponsored workshop last month. Click here to read our first impressions of Photoshop CS6.

Once you download the free beta of Adobe Photoshop CS6, tell us what you think of the software in the comments below.